Finding the Best Health & Fitness Apps Just Got Easier

At SparkPeople, we're always on the lookout for useful tools that make it easier to lead a healthy lifestyle. According to the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings, there are more than 40,000 health and wellness apps on the market. These days it seems like there's an app for absolutely everything you need to lead a healthy life, from finding healthy recipes to fitness tracking to getting a quick medical reference. But with so many options and possibilities, it can feel a bit overwhelming to know where to start. What apps are most relevant to your goals and what new apps are worth trying? And once you start on your path to a healthier you with these apps, juggling the various tools can get cumbersome. Until now…

Enter CarePass® from Aetna, one of the new partners working with SparkPeople. CarePass is a digital health and wellness platform that’s open to all consumers and easily accessed from both your computer and your smartphone. With CarePass, you can set up meaningful health and wellness goals; discover apps to meet those goals; connect the data from your apps to track your progress and see the big picture of your health all in one place.

Here's what Aetna has to say about the unique features of CarePass:

CarePass puts you in the driver’s seat. You set your own goals and control your own data. We’ll help you measure your progress, connect you to others on similar health journeys, and show you a consolidated view of your health based on data from apps that sync with CarePass, as well as any additional information you provide.

The more information you provide and the more apps you use, the more the CarePass® platform can provide a full view of your health.

So whether you are looking to fit into your favorite pair of jeans, get ready for a 5K, or kick start a healthy lifestyle by losing your first pound, CarePass can direct you to the right health apps for your needs, keep all your goals in plain sight, and help you create your own personal vision of healthy.

So, how do apps help you reach your health and fitness goals?

What are your favorite health and wellness apps?

What app would you like to see created that doesn’t exist today?

Get started with CarePass today! Then join us in the SparkPeople community as you work to accomplish your goals.

You will earn 5SparkPoints

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Planning on getting an iPhone soon so have been looking into fitness apps. These are the ones I'm interested in (and if anybody has tried these and would like to let me know how they are then it's fine to leave a comment on my sparkpage).

Zombies Run! https:// www.zombiesrungame.com / (The creators of Zombies are planning on putting out another app called The Walk in early 2014--a spy thriller narrative walking game) I would REALLY like to see more fantasy narrative apps like these on the market.

1. Go to www.sparkpeople.com/resource/sync-fitness.asp 2. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to locate the CarePass option. 3. Click the button that says, "Sync your CarePass account now". 4. After clicking the button, a page will load requesting your CarePass credentials. Enter the credentials, and your accounts will be connected.

Once your accounts are connected, you can choose to send your SparkPeople data to CarePass. To synchronize your nutrition information, go to your nutrition tracker and click the button towards the bottom of the page that says, "Send Foods to CarePass." To synchronize your fitness, go to your fitness tracker and click the button that says, "Send Activity to CarePass."

Note that information syncs from your SparkPeople account to CarePass, but our mobile apps don't have a direct connection. In order to synchronize information from your SparkPeople app to CarePass, it must be connected to a SparkPeople.com account; to transfer your information, you can go to the trackers on our main website and synchronize using the buttons on each tracker. - 8/9/2013 4:38:49 PM

Aetna is also a health insurance company. Be prepared for it to give you sponsored, biased app choices based on companies that they probably have a vested interest in, not necessarily ones that will be best for you. Just another marketing tool...
- 8/1/2013 12:52:44 PM

What if you tried all the recommendation by the apps and you still find it hard to lose weight and look fit? hope you guys could come up with apps that can advise on the best option in weight loss surgery.

Apps help in organizing personal information (i.e. caloric intake, fitness minutes etc.) and in having reference material (i.e. nutritional information) readily accessible when I need it. The apps I currently use are the SparkPeople app, MapMyFitness and C25K.
- 8/1/2013 12:01:22 PM

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